[griffzhowl]

Very perspicacious remark that it's more likely than five or four... are you an astronautical engineer by any chance?

But I'm wondering about such shallow angles - wouldn't it bounce off the atmosphere or somesuch? Perhaps it's just about possible somehow: just imagine firing a kilometre of rock from a mountain at a six degree angle with enough velocity to get it into orbit, but in reverse.

[jacquesm]

At some point it might but that would depend highly on the speed of the object relative to us....

Tunguska must have been just too steep because it left a very long track and likely did not even impact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

At Mach 80 a lot of things that seem compressible are not... so yes, once you get to angles like that at some point it would possibly deflect but the energy dissipated will still be massive and the shockwave will be ringing the whole planet.